LANCASTER AND MAXWELL ( ✔ )

chapter thirty-one.

Chapter Thirty-One. 

SULLIVAN wakes up to the smell of stale air. 

Blinking once, then twice, he squints and groans as the bright fluorescent lights hit his eyes aggressively. His movements are slow and groggy, as if he's trudging through a ton of molasses. Sully moves his left hand up to cover his lights, but it's heavier than what he's used to and it falls back on the bed. "What the," he murmurs huskily, looking over at his left side to see that his whole forearm is encased in a pasty white cast. What the hell happened last night? He knits his eyebrows together with confusion, but then he remembers. 

Arthur's dad pushed me down the stairs.

His eyes go wide with another realization: Arthur isn't in the room.

Arthur. 

He tries to sit up, but he's greeted with a searing headache and an aching pain in his sides that he can only pinpoint as his ribs. Still, that doesn't stop him. The young man is a second away from ripping the IV out of his arm before a nurse with braids comes in and gently pushes him back onto the bed. "You can't get up yet, Sullivan-Jaymes, you're still on medication!" 

"Where is Arthur?" His words are slurred and his movements are stunted, but the intent is there. He's beginning to panic and fear sets into his bones about his boyfriend, and he won't stop until he's figured out whether or not he's okay. "Where the fuck is Arthur?" 

It's the only thing that comes out of his mouth, and he's becoming more rash and impulsive and it ends up taking three more nurses and Jude to come in here and hold him down so that's he's injected with a tranquilizer. 

His screams turn into murmurs, and his cries for Artie become whimpers before he's right back underneath the blanket of sleep again. 

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SULLIVAN blinks once, then twice, and he's back at the beach. 

He looks down, and a cast is no longer on his arm, and he's wearing the same black t-shirt that he wore last night. His feet sinks deep into the sand, and he looks around at the beach and there's no one there except for him. "Hello?" Sully's voice echoes for miles, and he looks around at his surroundings and he sees that everything is the same as it was last night. The perfect scenery. 

Squinting, he looks further than the setting sun and he sees someone with their back turned towards him, facing the water. He wades his way slowly to him, and he sees that it's Arthur standing there. He's wearing one of his stupid aloha shirts all the way buttoned up for once, and his jeans are rolled up so that his ankles wade in the water easily. He doesn't say anything for a moment, just looks ahead at something further than the water will take anything. Finally, he breaks the silence. 

"Isn't the ocean terrifying?" Arthur's lips quirk up into one of his schoolboy smiles, and he shakes his head. "No, seriously. We've explored more of what is in space than what's right in front of us. The thought of something down below, right there next to us, and we don't know what it is, says something about us humans, doesn't it?" 

"What's it say?" Sully asks. 

He shrugs. "That we really don't know shit. Wanna know something else?" Arthur doesn't wait for Sullivan to answer, just shoves his hands into his front pockets and keeps on talking. "You know the tale of Achilles and Patroclus, you made me read those fucking myths everyday until I was blue in the face. They say that when after Patroclus was murdered and that Achilles found him, he gave out a cry so loud that the creatures at the bottom of the ocean could hear it. Wouldn't you die to have a love like that?" He pauses before giving out a small laugh, rocking back on his heels and letting the wind waft through his hair. "Well, I guess I did, didn't I?" 

Sullivan doesn't comment on that. "Why wouldn't you let me save you, Artie?" 

Arthur finally turns towards Sully with those cerulean blue eyes of his, the ones that could create wars, and he shrugs. "There was never any saving me, Sully, don't you get it? Heroes live in tragedies, lovey. I wasn't changing that phenomenon." 

"You never had to face it alone, Arthur," he says and he turns to the side to reach for his face, and his hand goes into shock when he touches the side of his cheek. It's cold and every edge is sharp to the bone, like porcelain.

My very own statue.

"Artie," he speaks, and his voice cracks when he says his name because he's so full of love and hate at the same damn time it makes him sick to his stomach. "Artie listen to me, I love you, okay? I love you more than the fucking grains of sand on this beach, and I swear that I will protect you from everything. Every night, if I have to wait by your bedside with a sword in hand waiting to face your demons, then so be it. I'm never letting you hurt like this, not again. I will bear your cross from now on." 

Artie's own eyes begin to cloud with tears, his cheeks leaving salty trails where the tears left his face and hit the sand. This is the first time he's ever seen his lover in tears, and it drives him to insanity. Why, why why? Why did it have to be him? 

"Why didn't you tell me this when I was alive?"

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SULLIVAN wakes up to his mother and Jude sitting in the seat to the right of him, and he melts with relief at the familiar face. "Mama," he melts into broken words, eyes blurring with salty tears threatening to spill from his lash-line.  

"Oh baby," she stands up and cradles his face in her hands, pressing kisses all over his face before pulling away with tears of her own. Kitty didn't show her emotions often, but when she did, she's able to move mountains to tears. "My baby, what happened to you?" 

"Arthur's dad, he—" Even discussing it leaves his mind jumbled with confusions and missing holes and that he can't quite comprehend. His father was so angry, so filled with malice and venom, he had never seen anyone like that before. It didn't take long to fill in the holes, and now that Sullivan has realized that it's been his dad all along that has been doing these things to him, he can't help but to feel guilty and enraged. He had looked up to Mr. Lancaster since he was a naive boy who needed a father, who prayed for a man like Arthur had. He'd go to bed at night with his rosary pressed against his thumbs, praying to God that he'd deliver a man like that into his home, and he didn't know that the whole time he'd been slamming his son's head into the wall. Has he been this blind the whole time? "He found me and Artie together last night, and... he said some pretty ugly things to us both. Artie told him to stop, then he just pushed me down the stairs. That's all I remember." 

She makes a sound that's close to a sob, shaking her head and turning over her shoulder to look at Jude. "I told you that we should've taken Arthur outta that home the moment we had the chance. Somethin' has never been right about that man!"  

"Where is he? W-Where's Arthur? I have to see him, please," He begs, and his heart breaks even further when his mother and Jude exchange looks between the two of them that make his stomach twist and turn into knots. 

Kitty looks hesitant to speak, but eventually she knows she has to and break his son's heart. 

"Baby, Arthur is in a coma."